This blog is updated daily..
A general description is here.
methods::trySilent() is now a simple direct wrapper around
tryCatch(), instead of building on try().
pPairlists may now be assigned as elements of lists. (Lists could always be created with pairlist elements, but [[<- didn't support assigning them.)
New function untar() to list or unpack tar archives, possibly compressed. This uses either an external 'tar' command or an internal implementation.
R CMD INSTALL has a new option --data-compress to control the compression used when lazy-loading data. THe default is 'gzip': 'bzip2' will give ca 15% better compression at the expense of slower installation times. More methods are planned for future releases.
[Experimental] gzfile() can recognize and decompress files compressed by 'xz' if suitable OS support is found at configuration. Since gzfile() is widely used to read files, this means that for example load() can read files compressed by 'xv' (and it can save substantial amounts of space on large data files).
methods::trySilent() is deprecated for try(*, silent=TRUE) or --more efficiently and flexibly--something like tryCatch(*, error=function(e)e).
There is a new utility program untgz.exe to be used by untar() when 'tar' is not availableunpack tarballs such as R packages without needing Rtools.